


A Flower in the Night

by orphan_account



Category: THE iDOLM@STER: SideM
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Childhood, First Meetings, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:34:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24002902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: tiny tendou toddler..........................
Relationships: Kuzunoha Amehiko/Tendou Teru
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	A Flower in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> tiny tendou toddler..........................

"Are you alright?"

For a moment he forgets his own predicament, footsteps quick across the moss covered ground. He points his phone's flashlight down to the stone steps, illuminating cracks and chisels, the hem of a dark, _temari_ patterned yukata, and the sliver of pale skin beneath it. 

Teru looks up for a moment, tilts his head as peers into ice blue eyes. He can't quite tell if the other boy is even looking back at him, or somewhere behind his head, a point in the distance. 

"Does it hurt?" He tries again.

Still nothing. 

The redness around the swell of the boy's ankle is a bit worrying.

He fidgets, fingernails scratching at the casing of his phone. Faint glow from the lanterns along the path starts to grow brighter with the night settling in.

Thumbing through his phone tells him that it's way past the time where he should have been back at the Toudaiji for assembly. 

He wonders if the school's going to leave him behind and go back to the inn. 

_Will they go look for him afterwards?_

"Don't you have something else to worry about?"

Teru jumps a little, not expecting a reply now, of all times. 

" _Ahahah,_ " he laughs, sheepish. "I was actually here for a field trip, just― got myself a bit lost." 

"'A bit' is quite the understatement." Teru thinks he sees a phantom of a smile, a barely-there chuckle, probably at his expense. "Toudaiji is about an hour's walk away from here."

"What I can I say? A hero watches over every corner for anyone who might be in need!" He puffs his shoulders out, winks, theatrical bravado mostly in jest. 

"And yet, you're the only one here that needs any form of saving."

His voice is soft, teasing, as a means of distraction, maybe, hoping to take Teru's attention away from where he subtly tucks his feet away. 

Teru catches the way he positions his yukata all the same, a flutter of cloth, his _furisode_ hanging over his toes, his hands folded prim over his lap. 

"I'm pretty sure I'll find my way back down one way or another," he says, more than quite a bit distracted, visibly fixated on the other boy's injury. "Don't worry about me, more importantly you're―" 

"A ghost, for all you know." 

"Huh?"

It wouldn't have been too much of a stretch. Dusk, early into the beginnings of autumn, a staircase seemingly endless, stretching up, towards a shrine hidden away in the depths of Mount Kasuga.

A strange boy barely visible under the shade of the woods. 

Teru feels a slight chill, as the wind picks up around his shoes. When he looks up, it's right at the moment bright white, vivid red, obscures blue, bold, striking lines of a kitsune mask pulled down to stare back at him. 

"I might just be a spirit of the forest, leading little kids like you astray."

He's inclined to believe him, what with the colours from his embroidered yukata appearing almost eerie under the cascade of scattered lights. 

His grip on his phone wavers.

A part of him had expected the boy to have disappeared with the shadows his flashlight casts.

"Doesn't it hurt?" Teru finds himself say, despite everything. 

The two of them jolts, when all of a sudden, the boy's geta clatters onto the ground between them. With the sound of wood against stone, instantly, the spell breaks. 

Teru watches the way the other finally leans back, guarded posture ebbing away to make room for loose shoulders, sprawled legs, his head lolling backwards. 

His chuckle cuts through the air, nervous ― warm, somehow, a brief remnant of summer. 

"A little," he admits, lifting his mask up, tucking a stray stand of hair behind his ear in one motion.

Teru huffs, takes the unspoken invitation to close the distance. "I don't know what you were trying to achieve."

He unravels the taping he keeps bound around his fingers ― it's currently more of a good luck charm, his battle costume, if anything.

"Try not to think about how this probably feels unnervingly lukewarm, yeah? It's the only thing I have on hand," he adds as an afterthought, unwarranted consideration. 

"Neither do I, actually," he sighs. Teru feels the faintest hint of unease slowly begin to dissipate under the pad of his fingers. Gently, he starts tending to his wounds, careful, as much as possible, soft brushes of skin. 

"Should've let me done this from the beginning."

"Maybe I felt like pulling a small prank on _Otendou-sama_." 

It doesn't take long for Teru to notice that his new friend finds humour in the strangest things, and more often than he had initially let on. He had said it like a personal inside joke, looking back up, right above and slightly behind Teru's head. The same spot he had been staring off into earlier.

"It's nothing you should worry about," he deflects easily.

Perhaps it was never meant for anyone else but himself, in the first place. 

Curious as he is, Teru is content in letting him have his space, not pressing further than he needs to. 

"That should do the trick," Teru says, knotting off the ends. "Try standing?"

For a moment, he begins to let himself think that there might have been a chance, however unlikely, that he had met a spirit, separated and lost as he is. 

The boy rises from his seat, toes his geta on to stand poised ― one feet, firm against the ground, then the other. 

He's tall, a good head or so more than Teru.

_Ethereal,_ was the one word, that immediately came to mind.

There was nothing at all about his stance that gave the impression that he was hurt in anyway, just moments before.

Teru sees the way the his eyes widen, just a fraction. He catches the tail end of a smile, a millisecond glimpse before it is hidden again, behind a swinging sleeves. 

He doesn't think it's fatigue or hunger ― he had his share of crackers before realising they were deer feed, after all ― but he feels his knees go weak, his head featherweight, almost. 

"I suppose it's only polite that I reward the hero with one wish, now," he frames his words like a joke, but Teru would like to think that he could hear the underlying sincerity.

"You could start with a blessing me with a sacred sword?" he replies, a response just as appropriately silly. 

He's taken aback once again. This time, by the genuine laughter he manages to draw out. The boy looks back at Teru with a lopsided smile, fond exasperation in the breath he tries to steady, in the one raised brow as he inclines his head towards him.

His hand reaches out for his, outstretched into the air, a folklore-like allure of the night.

_Ah,_ he thinks, _tonight, he might get spirited away._

"How about I get you back to the main temple grounds?"

The boy's hand is cold under his, yet―

_Yet―_

Teru feels warmth ghosting the tip of his ears.


End file.
